A failure of engagement in Travis County courthouse vote

The Heman Marion Sweatt Travis County Courthouse at Guadalupe and 10th Streets. On Tuesday, voters rejected a bond measure to build a new courthouse downtown.

For 15 years, Travis County commissioners hemmed and hawed on deciding when to ask taxpayers to replace the Heman Marion Sweatt Courthouse, built in 1931 and decades past its prime. If commissioners thought the right proposal and the right moment had arrived Tuesday, voters left them sorely disappointed — and in County Judge Sarah Eckhardt’s case defiant.

Travis County voters rejected a $287 million bond measure to build a new civil courthouse in downtown Austin 50.7 percent to 49.3 percent. The defeat was narrow — a margin of 1.4 percentage points — but a defeat nonetheless. There is wide agreement that Travis County needs a new courthouse, but the only certainty after Tuesday’s election is that when and where to build it remain a matter of further angst and debate.

Those against the bond proposal included Austin City Council Member Don Zimmerman, who spoke for fiscal conservatives opposed to higher property taxes, and the Real Estate Council of Austin, whose last-minute resolution denouncing the proposed downtown location as a waste of real estate probably sealed the courthouse measure’s doom. Both the Zimmerman and Real Estate Council camps reflected a broader coalition of voters who think the county can build a new courthouse for less money in East Austin, and in a location more accessible than downtown.

Eckhardt vowed to continue the fight. State law prohibits counties from putting a related bond measure on the ballot for three years so if Travis County is to build a new courthouse in the near future, commissioners will have to look for other ways to finance it.

Eckhardt’s post-election response to the courthouse’s defeat probably won’t help her cause. “Losing a bond election? Big deal,” she said. “The bigger deal is that not enough of our community is sufficiently engaged in one of the basic tenets of our democracy, which is providing justice to all segments of our community.”

She emphasized the point when she declared that Tuesday’s low turnout — 11.7 percent — “was not a rejection of the project or of the location. It was a lack of interest in our democracy.”

Well, the fact is, voters did reject the project and its location. As for Tuesday’s turnout, there was nothing surprising about it. Few Texans bother to vote in odd-numbered election years, which usually only feature state constitutional propositions and a handful of county and municipal elections. Perhaps, then, Eckhardt and her colleagues on the Commissioners Court should have waited a year before putting the courthouse proposal on the ballot. Next year is a presidential election year, after all. Turnout is always highest during presidential elections. More important, Democratic turnout is always highest during presidential elections and more Democratic voters may have proved the difference for a courthouse backed by a Democratic county judge.

Advocates for affordable housing learned the lessons of that defeat and returned the next year with a tweaked $65 million proposal. They made sure the ballot language was clear and to the point, and they put together an effective campaign. The payoff: 60.4 percent of voters approved affordable housing bonds — and did so in a constitutional election year marked by low turnout.

While turnout in most elections is pathetic and shameful, it wasn’t a lack of turnout that defeated the new courthouse. It wasn’t voters who failed to engage in democracy, but courthouse proponents who failed to engage voters — specifically enough potential voters willing to support their proposal. Voters and elections don’t fail; candidates and propositions do. In Tuesday’s immediate election aftermath, it’s not clear that lesson has been learned. And Eckhardt’s immediate response could prove alienating moving forward.

Meanwhile, voters statewide approved all seven proposed changes to the Texas Constitution on Tuesday’s ballot. Voters rarely reject constitutional amendments and no proposition received less than two-thirds support Tuesday.

For those keeping count, Texans have now approved 491 state constitutional amendments since 1876. Number 500 awaits — if not in 2015 then certainly in 2017.

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